BEIJING (AP) - Chinese police investigating a spate of attacks this month in western Xinjiang province shot dead six suspects and arrested three others, state media reported.
An exile group, meanwhile, accused police Saturday of gunning down the suspects, members of the Muslim Uighur ethnic minority, after they surrendered.
Police encountered nine suspects in a corn field near the far western city of Kashgar on Friday evening, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. The suspects had knives and tried to resist arrest, putting up a "desperate struggle," it said late Friday.
A policeman and a local militia man were wounded in the clash, the report said.
Initial investigations linked the suspects to attacks on Aug. 12 and Aug. 27, Xinhua said. The report gave no other details.
Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the Germany-based World Uighur Congress, said armed police surrounded the corn field and asked the Uighur men through a loudspeaker to surrender themselves, promising to provide them with lawyers.
The suspects did not resist arrest and police with submachine guns opened fire after they had surrendered, Raxit said in a statement Saturday, citing accounts by local Uighurs.
An official from the Xinjiang government — speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media — said six suspects were shot dead. But he denied the men had been shot after surrendering and called the allegations "nonsense."
The predominantly Muslim region of Xinjiang saw three deadly attacks blamed on Uighur separatists before and during and the Beijing Olympics. Videos appeared online with self-professed Uighur militant groups threatening the games.
On Aug. 12, attackers jumped from a vehicle and stabbed civilian guards, killing three at a roadside checkpoint in Yamanya town, near Kashgar. The assailants escaped. Two Chinese policemen died and seven more were wounded after a clash Wednesday in a village in Jiashi county.
No one has claimed responsibility for any of the attacks. Government officials have blamed Uighur militants.
China has long said that insurgents among the region's dominant ethnic Uighurs are leading an Islamic separatist movement in Xinjiang — an oil and gas-rich region on the border with Afghanistan, Pakistan and six Central Asian nations.
The Uighurs are Turkic-speaking Muslims with a language and culture distinct from the majority of Chinese.
Critics accuse Beijing of using claims of terrorism as an excuse to crack down on peaceful, pro-independence sentiment and expressions of Uighur identity. |